Study on the practical application of the new framework methodology for measuring the environmental impact of ICT - cost/benefit analysis (SMART 2012/0064 )

The study concludes that existing methodologies for measuring the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy footprint of ICT developed by various standardization organizations are suitable for being integrated into concrete environmental policy measures. Applied to mandatory reporting of electricity consumption, the benefits outweigh the cost when applied to Data Centers and Telecommunication networks where there exists a lack of environmental policy measures and a lack of publicly available data despite their footprint growing by 45% by 2020 in EU-27.